Carnaby, by Cate Sampson

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Adults tend to think that children must be protected from stories featuring
cruelty, poverty and abuse – whether by bowdlerising fairytales or by
sneering at authors who do address it. Yet the privileged and
underprivileged alike want and need to know about this stuff.

Cate Sampson’s debut, Carnaby, is shockingly detailed about what
life is like for 13-year-old Sarah, who finds her Mum murdered in the
squalid South London flat where they live. Sarah’s elder sister, Jude,
already has one child, Em, and at 16 is heavily pregnant with another.
Grotesquely neglectful, Jude sits around in a stupor while Sarah,
half-starved,